Within a relatively short space of time the computer has come to be an accepted feature of architecture, both in the design process and when it comes to the everyday operation of buildings and the city. Yet we are constantly aware that the consequences of the computer’s introduction into architecture will eventually be much more far-reaching than is presently the case. From the very beginning, architects, artists, media designers and theorists have nonetheless speculated about these implications.

It is after all a theme that invites extensive speculation and experiment and this has led to a spate of publications, installations, symposia, built experiments and exhibitions. Among the latter is the series of exhibitions collectively entitled ‘Transarchitectures’, versions 02 and 03 of which will be on show in the Netherlands Architecture Institute from 17 November to 12 December as part of the Dutch Electronic Art Festival (DEAF).

Transarchitectures 01 was held in 1997 and according to Marcus Novak, participating architect and one of the pioneers of virtual architecture, it was the first exhibition devoted specifically to this subject. While an increase in the number of participants certainly ensures that Transarchitectures 02/03 will be the most comprehensive presentation yet of architects who design with the help of the computer, it also makes the selection more problematical. With the passage of time and the increase in the number of exhibitors it is now clear that the individual architects, on closer inspection, have such radically divergent interests and use or develop such radically different software that, unlike a few years ago perhaps, it is no longer possible to lump them all together under the one heading. Although Transarchitectures certainly provides a fine, ‘nutshell’ survey of the whole spectrum of interests and approaches, there is also a growing danger that the general public will interpret the whole thing as ‘architects lost in cyberspace’ – to misquote the title of the celebrated issue of Architectural Design which included the article by Marcus Novak from which Transarchitectures takes its name. 1

Novak goes so far in his article as to identify cyberspace in glowing terms as the last hope for a radical continuation of modernism: ‘Cyberspace as a whole, and networked virtual environments in particular, allow us not only to theorise about potential architectures informed by the best of current thought, but to actually construct such spaces for human inhabitation in a completely new kind of public realm. This does not only imply a lack of constraint, but rather a substitution of one kind of rigour for another. When bricks become pixels, the tectonics of architecture become informational. City planning becomes data structure design, construction costs become computational costs, accessibility becomes transmissibility, proximity is measured in numbers of required links and available bandwidth. Everything changes, but architecture remains. 2

This recital recalls the short story by science fiction writer William Gibson in which a woman who has experimented endlessly with facelifts and wafer-thin exoskeletons in quest of eternal youth, finally submits to sampling in cyberspace – from where she phones the shaken narrator. After all, he reasons, she may wander through cyberspace forever more, but doesn’t that mean that she is in fact dead? 3

In an interview in this issue of Archis, Paul Virilio warns us that there is no reason for euphoria yet because virtual transarchitecture is still in its infancy. He also reminds us of the architect’s task to build the real space and to allow the actual space of the programme and the latent virtual space to coexist inside it. The only buildings that can perhaps be said to approach this ideal today are the H2O Pavilion by NOX and Kas Oosterhuis and NOX’s V2 Lab. In the same interview, Virilio points to the need to devise a new perspective – literally, in the sense of a method for structuring perception and designing – that takes account of the integration of real and virtual space. This would in his view bring about a revolution comparable to the one launched by the discovery or invention of perspective during the Renaissance and he argues rightly that the great Renaissance architects Alberti and Brunelleschi were equally great painters and theorists: ‘The perspective of real space of the Quattrocentro doesn’t only organize paintings, but the city, politics. ‘

Instead of trying to guarantee the eternal life of an existing architecture in a different medium, our strategy today should be the contamination of that architecture with other media and disciplines in order to produce a new and more robust mongrel breed. It is this line of reasoning in particular that informs this issue of Archis. In ‘The motorization of reality’, Lars Spuybroek sees the computer, by analogy with the wooden perspective machines of the Renaissance, as ‘a tool for structuring visibility’. It is a machine that, depending on the software used, can register reality in the form of video images or other data input, but that is equally capable of simulating, controlling, projecting and broadcasting reality.

The computer is an instrument for visualizing things that cannot be seen with a traditional camera or the naked eye, or for visualizing things in a different way. Of the architects featured in this issue of Archis, Tam·s Waliczky and Art + Com specialize in using the computer to visualize the aspect of time in visual perception. Steve Mann uses a head-mounted camera with a permanent online link to a web site to explore the invisible limits of the security systems that are continually monitoring us: where and when is observation associated with power? Who has the right to observe where and when and who not? In 10-dencies, Knowbotic Research uses the computer as a machine for visualizing invisible force fields in the city in order to make them available for collective actions which can then be elaborated in a network environment.

But the computer is also a projection instrument. In his project for Linz Castle, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer uses the computer literally to project the invisible environment of history on to a real building, thereby visualizing and changing its significance. Projection can also be understood as the realization of an architectural project developed entirely in accordance with the logic of the computer. Greg Lynn’s project for an industrially produced house is an example of this. It makes use of the rules defined for computer-controlled production robots (like the ones used in the automotive industry) which permit extensive variations in the item under production provided certain basic conditions, a kind of DNA, are met. In light of this, Lynn’s design can be seen as a series of embryos for CAD/CAM-produced assembly-line houses.

Interactivity is the next stage. Here the computer becomes a machine that converts observations – input – directly into projections by means of special software. This makes it possible to design and build spaces that react directly to the behaviour of the visitors who enter them. The rods in Christian Muller’s Audio Grove installation convert physical contact into sound and light effects. And in its Chamberworks installation, Ocean makes use of an interactive sound and light system that registers the movements of visitors inside a complex spatial installation. But this interactivity can also play a role during the design phase, as in Greg Lynn’s earlier designs like the H2 house in Schwechat near Vienna, or here, in Ocean’s design for the physical part of Chamberworks. By firing particles inside a computer-simulated model of reality, Ocean generated a pattern of lines that was then used to model the installation.

Perhaps as we peer at the totality of presentations, we shall catch a glimpse of a future architecture. But let us above all look at them open-eyed and critically: where do these machines fail? Where do the accidents occur? Surely the essence of machines is that they break down? These questions will be debated by several of these artists and architects during a special symposium to be held in V2 as part of DEAF, which this year is devoted to ‘The Art of the Accident’. To quote media artist Bill Viola: ‘Yet try as I might, I cannot image the moment of my death.’ 4

NOTES

1. Marcos Novak, ‘Transmitting Architecture’, in AD Profile No. 118, ‘Architects in Cyberspace’, London, 1995.

2. Ibid.

3. William Gibson, Wintermarkt, in NOX 2, Biotech, 1992; originally published as ‘The Winter Market’, in Burning Chrome, London, 1988.

4. Bill Viola, ‘The Visionary Landscape of Perception’, in Robert Villette and Bill Viola (eds.), Reasons for Knocking at an Empty House, Writings 1973-1994, London, 1995.